Flashy Plans for a Famous Address; Rockefeller Center Is Counting on Retail, and the Bull Market

Published: June 7, 1998

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To be called ''The NBC Experience at Rockefeller Center,'' it will offer a 3-D theater, a cybercafe and displays of NBC memorabilia, while serving as a staging area for studio tours and a venue for merchandising T-shirts, hats and Peacockiana.

Brokers say other interested retailers include Old Navy, T. J. Maxx and a possible Saks Fifth Avenue satellite. The strategy, brokers and Rockefeller Center officials say, is to sell large blocks of retail space to at least five blue-chip retailing names, establishing anchor sites. All Mr. Speyer would say is that ''it's like working on a mosaic.''

The center will have to fight hard to set itself apart from mall mania. ''Who needs more clothing stores and theme restaurants?'' said Mr. Riley, the office worker. ''That kind of thing is just about everywhere in the suburbs and Manhattan.''

Objections to Changing A Building's Experience

The final roster of retail tenants is hanging fire, waiting for the Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider Rockefeller Center's grand plan. The center's owners want to accommodate merchants' penchant for multilevel stores by enlarging the center's one-story Fifth Avenue storefronts to two-story glass bays. And they hope to create new entrances to the underground shopping concourse from the Lower Plaza by encroaching on the granite-backdrop-and-basin setting of the center's cynosure, the gilt statue of Prometheus.

The commission will vote on the proposal this month.

Some preservationists have opposed such alterations to what they call an esthetic masterpiece. The proposed bays ''seem like a small thing, but can make a major change in the experience of the building,'' Eric Allison, president of the Historic Districts Council, said.

David Rockefeller, however, sees things differently.

''I don't think the bays change the basic character in any way,'' said Mr. Rockefeller, the patriarch of the clan that gave the center its name and currently owns 5 percent of it.

Mr. Speyer, he said, ''is showing great imagination'' in managing the Art Deco complex, built in the 1930's at a cost of $125 million.

Mr. Speyer would not comment on the preservationists' objections, save to say, ''We will not be bringing chrome to Rockefeller Center, I promise you.''

He made it clear that he would not tamper with the center's classic elements: its ice rink, Channel Gardens and annual Christmas tree festivities. Indeed, the new owners will be exploiting the complex's Rockefeller Center-ness, producing the first hourlong national television tree-lighting special on NBC.

To Mr. Speyer, Rockefeller Center is nothing less than ''the hub of the wheel.''

''It is the epicenter of New York City, the link between upper Fifth and lower Fifth. If we are successful, we can bring Fifth Avenue back, right down to Lord & Taylor, and all the way to the Empire State Building. And that would be quite an achievement.''

Mr. Speyer's impulse harks back to the center's original purpose, to create an urban square ''that will make the immediate surroundings the most valuable shopping district in the world,'' according to 1928 Rockefeller family documents.

But Mr. Speyer's detractors insist that rather than some grand plan to save a stretch of Fifth Avenue, he is driven primarily by an urgent financial imperative: high rents are needed to pay interest on the owners' loans and earn the investors a sought-after 20 percent return on their $306 million purchase price. Mr. Speyer counters that he is creating ''the right mix'' after years of dogged preliminary moves.

Two Deals Draw Praise From Owner's Critics

Mr. Speyer has won high marks even from critics for two key deals: landing Christie's and finding a tenant for Radio City. By early 1999, Christie's will consolidate its offices and auction space on 49th Street between Fifth Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas.

Mr. Speyer is giving both new tenants extraordinary latitude. For example, Christie's has the right to close Rockefeller Plaza at night ''and to treat it as a private street for dropping off customers'' at major evening sales, said Patricia G. Hambrecht, president of Christie's in North and South America.

Christie's may also collaborate with Cablevision Systems Corporation, which has leased Radio City Music Hall for $13 million per year. Cablevision plans to spend more than $25 million renovating the 65-year-old concert hall.

''It will be far and away the busiest theater in the world when we're done,'' said Dave Checketts, chief executive of Madison Square Garden, a subsidiary of Cablevision.

He said Radio City would also become the new headquarters of American Movie Classics, one of Cablevision's cable channels. Cablevision also plans to build a television production facility in Radio City space, and will use the hall's stage for productions.

In this it may collaborate with NBC, which had ''an arm's-length relationship with the prior ownership,'' said Robert Wright, the president of NBC.

The music hall ''was off limits to us under the prior owners,'' Mr. Wright said. Now NBC owns 15 percent of the Radio City production company, he said, and ''we see a huge potential there for us.''

Many Merchants Are Facing Uncertainty

But banished from this hive of worker bees is a horde of dispossessed merchants. ''My father and I spent our lives there; we really felt part of the Rockefeller Center family,'' said Arthur F. Sogno, a jeweler, whose father was one of the first retail tenants. The center's management did not renew his lease, forcing him to leave more than a year ago. The store is still vacant.

Many remaining tenants have been given their walking papers. ''They are saying I could be out by September,'' said Jerolim Vukich, the owner of a bustling nine-chair barbershop on the concourse level, who may be offered a more expensive space in a less-trafficked area. ''I hope my customers will still need their Jerry.''

The center has its own uncertainties to face. It will continue to require costly improvements and has high operating costs.

In addition, restaurant veterans wonder whether the owners can have a successful late-night restaurant-and-retail operation where there is no residential base.

The owners are negotiating with Restaurant Associates to create new dining concepts in the center. And to enhance the profitability of the Rainbow Room, the owners will eject the current operators, who balked at paying a huge increase in their $2.8 million annual rent.

But the Rockefeller Center neighborhood, dominated at night by the shuttered Saks, St. Patrick's Cathedral and a stand of ghostly office buildings, is ''one of the few places in Manhattan where the sidewalk rolls up at night,'' said one neighborhood merchant who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In the coming months, no formal Rockefeller Center master plan is likely to be trumpeted, ''but we have a clear vision that is evolving,'' Mr. Speyer said.

Successful or not, that vision will try to capitalize on Rockefeller Center's special status.

''It's like the Empire State Building or Wall Street,'' Barry Bull, a tourist from Brisbane, Australia, said on a recent afternoon. ''If you haven't seen Rockefeller Center, you haven't seen New York.''

Photos: Existing one-story and proposed two-story displays on Fifth Avenue. (pg. 25); A hallway lined with empty retail spaces inside Rockefeller Center. (Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)(pg. 31) Diagram: ''A New Face for Rockefeller Center'' The new owners' vision for the center would not only transform its retail stores but also its landmark architecture. (Beyer Blinder Belle; Architectural Delineator: Porto Folio, Inc.) Under the proposed plan, tourists from the Avenue of the Americas would mix with affluent shoppers drawn from the luxury stores on Fifth Avenue westward to Rockefeller Plaza and the surrounding stores, and to the shopping concourse underground. 1. STOREFRONTS To make Rockefeller Center retail shops more competitive, the owners plan to transform existing one-story storefronts along Fifth Avenue into more inviting two-story displays. Preservationists contend that though the changes seem small, they would deform the building's architectural composition. 2. ROCKEFELLER PLAZA: STREET LEVEL AND LOWER SHOPPING CONCOURSE New, taller, wider entries are proposed for the Lower Plaza at the skating rink to draw visitors to the under-ground concourse. But preservationists oppose opening blocked access points at the Prometheus statue, which would esthetically alter its setting. (Source: Beyer Blinder Belle)(Illustration by Juan Velasco/The New York Times)(pg. 25)